page_title: Chams
section_title: 21st century
hierarchical_section_title: Chams / History / 21st century
caption_attribution_description: English: Chams villages in An Giang province (An Phú, Châu Phú, Châu Thành district, Tân Châu town). Các làng Chăm ở tỉnh An Giang (huyện An Phú, Châu Phú, Châu Thành, thị xã Tân Châu).
context_page_description: The Chams or Cham people, are an ethnic group of Austronesian origin in Southeast Asia. From the 2nd to the mid-15th century the Chams populated Champa, a contiguous territory of independent principalities in central and southern Vietnam. They spoke the Cham language, and also the Tsat language by their descendants called Utsul in Hainan island, China, two Chamic languages from Malayo-Polynesian group of the Austronesian family. Chams and Malays are the only sizable Austronesian peoples that had settled in Iron Age mainland Southeast Asia among the more ancient Austroasiatic inhabitants.
context_section_description: According to a National Geographic article published by journalist Adam Bray, Vietnamese government fears that evidence of Champa's influence over the disputed area in the South China Sea would bring attention to human rights violations and killings of ethnic minorities in Vietnam such as in the 2001 and 2004 uprisings, and lead to the issue of Cham autonomy being brought into the dispute, since the Vietnamese conquered Cham people in a war in 1832, and the Vietnamese continue to destroy evidence of Cham culture and artifacts left behind, plundering or building on top of Cham temples, building farms over them, banning Cham religious practices, and omitting references to the destroyed Cham capital of Song Luy in the 1832 invasion in history books and tourist guides. The situation of Cham compared to ethnic Vietnamese is substandard, lacking water and electricity and living in houses made out of mud. The Cham activist organization "International Office of Champa" republished Bray's article on their website Cham Today.
  The Cham in Vietnam are officially recognized by the Vietnamese government as one of 54 ethnic groups. However, according to the Cham advocacy group International Office of Champa (IOC-Champa) and Cham Muslim activist Khaleelah Porome, both Hindu and Muslim Chams have experienced religious and ethnic persecution and restrictions on their faith under the current Vietnamese government, with the Vietnamese state confisticating Cham property and forbidding Cham from observing their religious beliefs. Hindu temples were turned into tourist sites against the wishes of the Cham Hindus. In 2010 and 2013 several incidents occurred in Thành Tín and Phươc Nhơn villages where Cham were murdered by Vietnamese. In 2012, Vietnamese police in Chau Giang village stormed into a Cham Mosque, stealing the electric generator. Cham Muslims in the Mekong Delta have also been economically marginalized, with ethnic Vietnamese settling on land previously owned by Cham people with state support.
  A Cambodian Cham Muslim dissident, Hassan A Kasem, a former military helicopter pilot who was both persecuted and imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge and fought against Vietnamese invasion, denounced Vietnam as trying to position itself as the savior of Cambodia from Khmer Rouge rule and wrote that Vietnam has deceived the west into thinking of it as a "magnanimous liberator" when it invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge when in fact Vietnam used the war to benefit its own interests such subjecting Cambodian financial assets and national treasures to pillaging and theft, settling border disputes to its own advantage, trying to destroy Cambodian nationalist feeling against Vietnam, benefiting from the mostly Khmer on Khmer violence by the Khmer Rouge and setting up its own Communist puppet government to rule Cambodia, the Cambodia People's Party (CPP) with Vietnamese soldiers secretly remaining behind in Cambodia to prop up the puppet government and Vietnamese officials pretending to be Khmer continuing to direct the government as their puppet. The Cham activist organisation "International Office of Champa" republished Hassan's article on their website Cham Today.
  An attempt at Salafist expansion among the Cham in Vietnam has been halted by Vietnamese government controls, however, the loss of the Salafis among Chams has been to be benefit of Tablighi Jamaat.
  The Muslim Acehnese people of Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia, are the descendants of Cham refugees who fled after defeat by the Vietnamese polity in the 15th century.
caption: Chams villages in An Giang province (An Phú, Châu Phú, Châu Thành district, Tân Châu town).
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